


people die (love does not)

by JHSC



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Brain Damage, Desert, Gen, Good Parent Talia al Ghul, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Jason Todd Gets A Hug, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Lazarus Pit, Middle East, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24501001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: Jason and Damian, before the Pit and after.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd
Comments: 86
Kudos: 498





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is no canon, only Zuul.

Awaken. Small room. Cold softness. Footsteps in corridor, away, away. 

Echoes. Whispers. Hands pressing, pulling, clothing. Boots. Straps over shoulders. 

Hand, tiny. Warm softness. Protect.

Move, walk. Forward into echoes. 

Wind in face. Hand, pulling. Inside. Hard seat. More straps.

Rumble. Smoke and diesel. Forward, jerking. Straps holding. Small hand holding.

Forward. Inertia. Soothing. 

Sleep.

*

Wake up. Rumbling, bumping. Too fast on washboarding.

Out window, brightness. Glare. Squint. 

Squint  _ and _ glare?

Yellow-brown, reflective, burning. Dusty. Dry. 

Not dry. Sweaty. 

Crank knob. Crank crank crank.

Reach. Wind, pushing. Turn wrist, wind through fingers. Turn hand, wind over palm. 

Lean. Wind over forehead.

Dry now.

*

Stop. 

Out. 

Mountain, red stone, rocky.

Black tents. Movement. Tugging. 

Follow inside. Cushions, red blue yellow orange. Rugs, woven.

Glass. Hot. Sweet.

Plate. Chicken. Tender, flavor. Carrots potato onion, roasted, crispy. Rice. Flat bread, warm.

Empty plate. More chicken?

More chicken.

*

Tent, dark, stuffy.

Hot. Stifling.

No air. Breathe. No breath.

Blanket, pillow, rug.

Outside.

Cool air, breeze. 

Sand. Pillow on blanket on rug on sand. Soft. Warm-not-hot.

Dark. Big dark, not closed dark. 

Not-dark.

Dark, spilled salt. Glow, shine, sparkle. So much. 

Band. Belt? Not belt.  _ Way. _ Not salt. Milk. Spilled milk. 

Rustle. Tent flap. Soft small steps. Question.

Blanket. Up and over. Tiny body, warm. 

Turn hand. Fingers in fingers. Palm in palm.

Spilled milk, no crying. Okay.

Sleep.

*

Drive.

Drive drive drive.

Stop. 

Straps, gone.

Out. Dark.

Hands, pulling. Both. Tiny soft, left hand. Less tiny, smooth, right hand. Both gentle. Both pulling.

Walk. 

Dust. Rocks. Crags? Cliffs.

Dry. Sulfur. Burned nose.

Sneeze.

Hands gone. 

Duck down. Crawl. Forward, forward. Cobwebs. Prickles up spine. 

Shadows. Flickering.

Glow. Yellow and green lava lamp. Dark. Cavernous.

Stand. Find wall. Lean. Hold. Slide down. Sit.

Boots, gone. Clothes, gone. 

Shiver. Bumps on skin. Chickenflesh, like dinner. 

No, Gooseflesh.

Forward. Pushing.

No.

Forward.

No.

Forward.

Green. Glowing green. Angry green. 

Monster. Acid. Alien. No.

Forward.

No. 

No.

Nonononono--

Breathe air.

Breathe green.

*

Jason wakes up screamingburningmelting he wakes up where is he he wakes up he’s drowning he’s burning he’s freezing Jason wakes up where the fuck is he why is he here what’s happening what the fuck is going on Jason wakes up and--

Jason wakes up and the Joker is laughing and shrieking and mocking and taunting and Jason wakes up and his arms are broken and his legs are broken and his ribs are broken and his spine is cracked and his hands are shattered and Jason wakes up and--

Jason wakes up and the crowbar is coming down and Jason wakes up and the bomb is counting down and Jason wakes up and Sheila is smoking a pack of Virginia Slims one-by-one and she lights them with a bright pink lighter and she sucks down the smoke and she breathes it back out and she shrugs and Jason wakes up and--

Jason wakes up and Jason is dying and Jason is coming alive and Jason is buried in six feet of black earth and Jason wakes up and he punches and splinters and shatters and Jason wakes up and he digs and he digs and he digs and he digs and Jason wakes up and--

Jason wakes up and he pushes off from the bottom of the pool and he breaks the surface and he gasps and he breathes and he cries and he grabs for the edge and he pulls himself up and out out out and--

Jason wakes up and vomits green bile and Jason wakes up and he shakes green sludge off his skin and Jason wakes up and he  _ screams _ \--

\-- and the air burns and his mind burns and his skin burns --

\-- and the Joker needs to burn and Sheila needs to burn and Bruce needs to burn, burn, burn --

\-- and enemies surround him, hands reach for him, voices call out for him, and Jason breaks the first hand that touches him and then the second, and then he runs, and he dodges, and he tries to escape but there’s no way out, there’s no way out and they are screaming and he is screaming --

\-- and a woman’s voice screams, “Damian, no!” --

\-- and tiny hands reach for him and Jason grabs them and --

\-- Jason swings the tiny body into his arms --

\-- feels its warmth--

Its weight--

Its little-child softness--

And Jason’s knees buckle, and he sits, and he holds the little body in his embrace, and he sobs.

“See, Mother?” the child says. “I knew he would remember me.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon? In _this_ economy?

*

Jason holds his precious burden and he scrambles back and back and back until his back hits rock, a small crevice, just big enough to engulf his hips and his shoulders and his head, just enough of a hint of safety that he can stop and breathe and hold the child and breathe and examine his surroundings and breathe and breathe.

The attackers have stopped, have backed off, hands held away from weapons and faces full of something not-angry, something not-enraged, something not-violent. Jason will kill them if they come closer, he will do more than break their hands, he will break their arms and their necks and open their skulls if they dare to even _look_ at the child in his arms. He will kill them all.

Jason shoves further back into the dark, rocky nook at his back, and the child moves with him, follows along easily, like he’s comfortable, like he’s safe. Jason doesn’t understand -- he doesn’t _know_ this child, doesn’t know his face or his name or who he is or where he’s from or why why _why_ Jason is clutching him tight or why Jason is tucking his nose into the child’s dark hair and taking a deep breath. 

But Jason knows his hands and his warmth and his little-boy smell, and the comfort makes him sob.

“There, there,” the child says, voice somehow both warm and condescending. “It is all right. You are all better now.”

“All better?” Jason asks. He coughs. His throat burns. He was screaming… For so long. All he remembers is screaming through green sludge, through black mud, through fire and the flash of iron swinging forehand and backhand again and again. “How?”

“You can speak, now. You couldn’t, before. Is that not better?” The child asks, pulling his head back to look at Jason, to let Jason look at him, to let Jason note the blue eyes and the warm brown skin and the startlingly familiar nose and jaw. He looks at Jason like he knows him, like his face is familiar as family, and it doesn’t make sense, he’s never met this child, he doesn’t know this child, he doesn’t know where he is or who he’s with or who is going to come after him, or them, or--

Someone in the group surrounding them breaks away, steps forward. Jason tenses, keeps one arm wrapped around the child as his other hand scrabbles frantically at the ground for some kind of weapon, a rock or a dropped knife or a batarang. He growls, and she stops.

“Tt,” the child says. “It is only Mother. There is no need to be rude.”

The woman kneels down and edges closer, enough that Jason can see her face, experience that same swirling, twisting confusion of knowing and not knowing, familiarity and strangeness, the feeling of safety and warmth, the sense memory of gentle hands and a full stomach, but he doesn’t know _how_ , doesn’t know _why_ , and it feels like his entire body is going to explode with terror and tension at the next person to come near.

“You are safe, Jason,” the woman says, the soothing sound another broken puzzle piece lost in the shattered wreckage of his mind. 

Jason shakes his head. “No. No, this is wrong, this is -- “

A sound, behind him. Laughter. High-pitched. Manic. Terrifying.

Jason whips his head around, but there’s nothing there, nothing there but solid stone, cold and damp and dead. He heard it. He could have sworn-- “Where is he?”

The woman doesn’t frown. “Where is who?”

“The--” Jason swallows down bile and clutches the child in his lap closer “--the Joker. He, he killed me, he was after me, he’s going to-- where is he?”

“The cement walls of Arkham, my most loyal followers, and ten thousand miles stand between you and he,” she replies carefully, slowly, like she wants him to understand that there is only truth in her words, not lies or betrayal. “He is not aware you live, and knows not of your presence in my country. You are safe.”

It’s a lie.

No one is safe while the Joker lives, nothing is safe, nowhere is safe. The Joker will destroy everything and everyone -- Jason and the little boy and the woman and her followers, he’ll kill them all if it suits his whims, and he’ll laugh and he’ll laugh and--

A tiny hand touches Jason’s face, his cheek, where it’s damp with tears he hadn’t realized he’d shed.

"How can I know I’m safe?” Jason asks those familiar eyes. “I don’t even know who you are."

“I am Damian al Ghul, Ibn Talia, Ibn al Xu'ffasch, Heir to the Demon’s Head,” Damian says primly. 

Jason’s gaze snaps over to the woman-- “Talia al Ghul?”

At her nod, he closes his eyes, memories surfacing faster than he can understand them, plaster walls and a soft bed and a cool hand, blinking machines and electrodes stuck to his skin, Bruce’s sad frown and stiff shoulders. “B has-- had a photo of you. In a drawer. I caught him looking at it once, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t say--”

He freezes. He looks around the cavern again, taking in all the unfamiliar faces, the green-tinged silhouettes that don’t quite match the one he’s grown to know better than any other, and the terror is back now, the fear is back now, because the Joker is alive and the Joker is in Arkham but Bruce isn’t here and no one has said that Bruce is in Gotham and no one has said that Bruce is alive and the Joker is alive and the Joker killed Jason and there was a bomb and Bruce was coming for him and--

\-- and he doesn’t want to ask and he doesn’t want to know and he doesn’t want to hear a hard truth and he doesn’t want to believe an easy lie --

“Jason?” Talia asks.

He braces himself. “Where… where is B? Where is my dad? Why isn’t he here?”

"Your father is well, and in Gotham,” Talia explains. “I intended to return you to him, once I had made you whole.”

“What do you mean, made me whole? What is this place? How did you even-- what _happened?_ ”

“Do you wish to hear the tale sitting on the hard rock of this cavern? Or would you prefer to leave first, for somewhere more comfortable?” Talia asks.

Damian answers for him. “I am cold, and your knees are unsuitably bony. We will leave this terrible cave and have breakfast, ahki. That should have been your first priority.”

It nearly startles a laugh out of Jason.

“I get the feeling,” he says, gathering up his courage to stand, “you win a lot of arguments.”

“I do,” Damian agrees.

*

Jason throws the half-full teacup against the side of the tent with a shout of rage, ire furthered by the fact that it doesn’t shatter against the rough woolen fabric. Nor does the iron teapot that follows, or his empty breakfast plate, and with nothing left within reach to throw, he throws himself through the curtained doorway and into the glaring brightness of the desert morning. 

He runs through the sand in his bare feet, kicking at rocks and ripping at the brown, brittle plants that litter the landscape, thorns tearing into his palms and bruises forming on his soles.

Talia follows him, alone and careful.

Jason soon loses his balance, spins and trips and lands on his side, punches the ground below him until his knuckles bleed, and finally screams, “A year? I’ve been here a _year?_ You’ve kept me away from my dad, let him believe I was _dead_ , for a _year?”_

“You may not have been dead, but you were not alive, Jason. You would not speak. You would not care for yourself. You were not… aware.”

“So _what?”_ he snaps.

Talia steps closer, deliberately making noise so that he can hear her approach. “So we attempted to heal you. I used my connections to consult with the leading neurology experts in the world. We performed tests. We performed interventions. You must understand, Jason, _nothing_ was working. The Lazarus Pit was our last attempt to restore your mind to you.”

He scoffs. “Restore my mind. _Restore my mind_. Why so much effort? Was I _happy_ the way I was?”

There’s a long silence. Then Talia finally admits, “You were not unhappy. But you were not whole.”

“Bullshit,” he snarls, thinking of his mom and his nana and the kid next door with Down's who could coax even the angriest stray cat into snuggling in his arms. “I was happy, I just wasn't productive. Wasn’t useful. I was a _burden_ , but I was happy, and you couldn't leave it well enough alone, could you? Better to be a miserable wreck than a happy -- why couldn’t you just bring me back to my dad-- ”

“Your father did not handle your death well,” Talia returns, voice firm and unwavering, and Jason doesn’t want to think about Bruce having to _handle_ his death, he doesn’t want to think about that at _all._ “I did not think he could cope with seeing you returned yet broken.”

“I wasn’t _broken_ , I was just different! B would've understood that! He would've liked me anyway!” 

He jumps to his feet again, kicks at the clump of vegetation he just tore apart and watches his feet stain it red with blood. He thinks about his last weeks as Robin, about Gloria Stanson and Felipe Garzonas and getting benched, the resentment and judgment and wish for someone, somewhere, to just _believe_ in him. 

Jason drops back to the ground. “He might've liked me _better.”_

Talia comes up to his side, and sits next to him. She takes his hand and turns it, palm facing up. The cuts are clotted with sand and debris. She takes a handkerchief out of her pocket and begins to slowly, gently, wrap up his wounds. Her voice is quiet when she speaks. “In that case, I am sorry. I made the choice blindly, based on what I would have wanted for my own child. I see now that you would have chosen differently.”

Jason stares down at his hands, at his feet. He doesn’t feel the pain. He doesn’t think it’s because of his anger, the adrenaline flash of rage. “The Pit did something to me, didn’t it?”

“There are… effects, yes. But they may be broken, with effort.”

“I’m sorry I threw your tea set. I’ll clean it up,” Jason says. He’s not talking about the tea set when he asks, “Will you help me?”

Talia ties off the knot around Jason’s hand and reaches up, slowly, to comb through his hair. Sprinkles of sand fall down onto his shoulders. For the first time since their (second?) meeting, Talia smiles. “I hope that someday, habibi, you will come to understand that I will always help you.” 

  
*


	3. Chapter 3

*

Dark. Cold. Quiet.

Not-quiet.

Footsteps, light and quick and unfamiliar. Creak of leather. Scrape of steel pulling out of leather.

Awake now. Feet to floor. Cold. 

Cross room. Blankets, pillow, tiny warm body. 

Crashing. Wood giving way. Lock breaking. Empty room not empty. 

Daggers. Swords. Danger.

Jump, flip, scissor-kick. One down. 

Duck, dodge. Spin. Kick, disarm, stab. Two down.

Jump, parry, switch dagger to other hand, punch. Crunch. Stab.

Empty room again.

Tiny warm body in blankets in arms. Body stiff. Tense. Scared.

Squeeze. Back-and-forth, rocking. Shhh. Shhh.

Arms around neck. Squeeze back. Not so tense. Good. 

Curtain, push aside. Panel, wood. Press here and here. Panel not panel -- door. Hallway, dark. Quiet.

Safe.

Follow. Hand on wall. Far away, light. Glowing.

Light, brighter.

Bright light, flickering, glaring. Nauseating.

Like old fluorescents in a warehouse. In a warehouse.

Don't go. Don't get closer.

Tiny warm body wriggles, jumps down. Runs forward. No. No closer. Come back.

Chase. Come back. Tiny warm body gone. Gone.

Hallway gone.

Cement floor, walls. Steel I-beams. Corrugated ceiling, rebar. 

Smell of dust and old gasoline and blood. B where are you.

Tiny body on floor. Red, yellow, green. Red, red, red. No. 

Tiny body on floor. Not warm. Cold.

No.

Tiny body unmoving. Not wiggling. Not hugging. Not playing. Not breathing.

No no no.

B where are you.

Laughter.

Echo, laughter echoing, bouncing from roof to walls to floor, surrounding, unending, forever laughing.

Turn, search. Nothing. 

Another laugh. Spin behind. Look, look, look. Only emptiness. 

And tiny, cold body.

*

Jason gasps awake and throws himself off the mattress onto warm sand and retches, and sobs, because the sand is unfamiliar but the cement floor was a clear and present memory, and the blood, and wishing wishing wishing for Bruce to come, for Bruce to find him. For Bruce to bring him  _home_.

But Bruce never came, and Bruce never found him, and it's been more than a  _year_ since he's been here with Talia and Bruce hasn't cared enough to notice? Either the world's greatest detective hasn't found him yet, or the world's greatest detective just doesn't _care._

Jason was mouthy, Jason was impulsive, Jason was fifteen and fucked up and freaked out and  _angry_ all the time. Maybe Bruce was glad to wash his hands of the whole mess that was Jason Peter Todd. Maybe Bruce never cared at all.

The Joker's laugh still echoes through his skull, and Jason tries to remember Talia's promise -- Arkham, guards, ten thousand miles. He digs his fingers into the sand, tries to ground himself, hold onto the world until his brain stops spinning and his heart stops pounding like it knows certain death is approaching on swift wings. He sobs again, can't seem to stop it, can't hold it in when all he really wants to do is _scream_ and then run and run and find Bruce and  _ shake _ him and ask  _ Did you even notice I was missing? _

__

"Fuck!" he rasps, after a moment. "Fucking fuck!"

__

"Mother doesn't like that word," Damian says from behind him, voice heavy with sleep. Damian, Bruce's son. Damian, Bruce's six-year-old doppelganger, tiny and warm and always ready to speak his mind. Who Bruce doesn't know about-- or at least, never told Jason about, god know Bruce could have been leading a whole other life with all the jet-setting he did around the world.

__

"I don't give a fuck what your mother doesn't like," Jason snaps. He leans sideways to collapse onto the ground, breathing somewhat more steadily. He's not alone. The Joker is far away. Bruce is far away. 

__

But Damian is here, and "ahki" is the Arabic word for "brother."

__

Damian appears in front of him, as if he'd crawled into bed with him sometime during the night, after Jason had hauled his bedding out of their tent and into the cool open air.

__

"Did you have another nightmare?" Damian asks, frowning under the starlight. His hair is mussed. He has a cowlick sticking straight up at the back of his head. Bruce has one in the exact same place.

__

Jason avoids the question. A six-year-old doesn't need to hear about what Jason just saw in the night. "Did I have them before the Pit?"

__

"I believe so," Damian says. He crawls over and sits cross-legged in front of Jason. "You would not speak or make noise. But you would--"

__

He holds his hands out and shakes them. 

__

"Tremble?" Jason offers.

__

"Yes, tremble. Like an earthquake in your body. When we woke you from it, you fought us. But if we did not wake you, and instead we--" he shifts closer to Jason, until he is tucked up against his side, achingly familiar "--then the earthquake ended, and you slept in peace."

__

"Oh," is all Jason can manage to say. "I don't-- I don't remember that. But. Thank you."

__

"You are welcome, ahki. May we go back to sleep, now?"

__

Jason takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Did we ever get attacked in the middle of the night? And escaped in a secret passage?"

__

Damian scowls as he climbs back onto the thin mattress and wraps a blanket around himself. "Tt. You may ask Mother for the details. I remained asleep during the entire event."

__

Then he says, "Ibn Jamal is approaching. He is one of our guards. Do not attack him. I like him."

__

Jason shifts into a squat, braced for a fight, just as one of Talia's guards steps out of the darkness towards them. He asks something in Arabic, and Damian responds in kind.

__

The man laughs, a warm chuckle that rolls through Jason like a gentle ocean wave. Then he disappears again in a blink.

__

"What was that about?"

__

"He came to ask what was wrong," Damian says, his voice shifting back to groggy, half-asleep. "I told him you were frightened by a camel spider."

__

Jason lays back down on the mattress next to Damian and pulls the blanket over them both. He stares up at the clear sky, lit up by millions of stars, the bright band of the Milky Way nearly bright enough to read by.

__

"Wait," Jason says, just as he's about to fall asleep. "What the fuck is a  _ camel spider?" _

__

__

*

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this instance, google is _not_ your friend. Let the mystery continue. Let the question remain un-asked.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day is back to driving, and driving, and more driving. 

The desert rumbles beneath the tires of their trucks, throwing out clouds of dust and the occasional chunk of rock behind them as they drive, and drive, and drive some more.

Jason sweats in the backseat, fiddling with the window knob and trying to get just the right amount of airflow into the backseat without causing too much wind noise. Next to him, Damian calmly sits, reading a book. Jason can’t parse the Arabic on the cover, but just from the design of the binding and the density of the text on the page, he figures the book ought to be way too advanced for a six-year-old. 

But Damian sits, and reads, and Jason is left to doze.

Dozing is… bad.

His eyes drift shut and his chin nods down to his chest, and his mind immediately throws image after image after terrifying image onto the movie screen of his mind. There’s Joker with a crowbar in his hand, obviously, and Sheila smoking her goddamned cigarette with practiced ease. But there’s also Dick, shouting at Bruce in the parlor of Wayne Manor, Bruce shouting back, stomping feet and slamming doors and a storm front moving in full of lightning and gale force winds.

Jason jerks his head up. Stares out the window at the desert, the rocks, the low green shrubs, the yellow tufts of some long, brittle grass, the herders with their goats and donkeys and camels, and tries not to think about his adoption, formalized a month after Dick moved out. Tries not to wonder -- the way he wondered as a kid, the way he wondered as a teenager on his way alone across an ocean and a continent -- if he was just a convenient stand-in for Dick. If Bruce only took him in because he hated living in an empty house, because he wanted someone around who wouldn’t argue with him, because Jason was convenient and alone and  _ there _ . 

Every doubt he ever had, every whisper of rejection, every hint of insincerity -- all of it swarms through Jason’s mind, amplified a thousand times over in the glare of the sun and the heat of the desert and the knowledge that walls and distance and guards haven’t ever stopped the Joker from achieving his goals.

Only Batman.

And even then, only for a while.

Jason forces his eyes open. He sits up straight. He curls his hands into fists, until his nails dig red crescents into his palms from the pressure of staying awake, awake awake.

The road stretches on into the horizon, the truck thunders forward, and beneath the engine and the wheels and the road and the rocks and the sand and the terror is the shriek of a delighted laugh.

*

They stop just before sunset.

The trucks are unloaded, the tents go up, and Jason is back on that patterned rug, sitting on a soft pillow and eating dinner with Talia and Damian. The food is hot and tender, and the tent is pleasantly warm, but every time Jason closes his eyes, the Joker’s grin stares down at him. 

Jason sets his plate down, still half-full. 

“Are you ill?” Damian asks almost immediately, perceptive as always. 

Jason shakes his head.

Damian turns to Talia. “I think he is ill. He did not speak at all while we were in the vehicle.”

“You were reading!” Jason manages to protest. “You don’t bother someone while they’re reading! It’s rude!”

That just serves to make Damian frown harder. “You did not speak, and you did not sleep. If you are not ill, then you must be sad, or angry. You should speak to us. You will feel better.”

Jason buries his face in his hands and groans. “I’m not sick, I’m not sad, I’m not -- I just--”

They give him a moment to collect his thoughts, and he’s grateful for that, except for the way that he suddenly hates them, hates this tent, hates the desert and the drive and the Pit and his brain and this whole entire fucking situation, he hates it all, and the thing he hates the most is…

“The Joker,” Jason whispers. “I see him when I close my eyes. I start to drift off and I hear his laugh. He’s ten thousand miles away and I swear at any moment he’s going to creep up behind me and, and finish the job.”

“Is there something we might do, habibi, to help you feel more safe?” Talia asks. Her voice is quiet, promising comfort and murder in whatever amounts he asks for.

“Mother can have our assassins break into the asylum within the hour,” Damian offers, which would be a tempting offer if only it wasn’t coming from the mouth of a six-year-old. “Or we can travel to Gotham together, and you may kill him yourself.”

A cold chill races up Jason’s spine at the thought of seeing the Joker again, facing him. Hearing his laugh. He shudders. No, no he doesn’t want to kill the Joker. What he wants… what he wants is...

“I want B to kill the Joker,” Jason realizes. “Rewrite the story. Change the ending. Make it so that Batman rescues me from the Joker and kills him in revenge for hurting me. If he did that… maybe then I’d finally feel safe.”

Damian makes a derisive noise and ignores Jason’s scowl. “That is a ridiculous plan. Simple is better. Why do we not just kill the Joker ourselves?”

“It’s not about just killing the Joker, it’s about Batman,” Jason grits out. “It’s about making him finally do what he should have done years ago to keep me and all of Gotham safe. It’s about proving beyond any doubt that he cares about me--”

“You are an imbecile.”

Jason snaps his mouth shut, shocked. 

Damian speaks with a confidence Jason doesn’t remember how to feel anymore. “You wish to prove that Father cares for you. But if he does  _ not _ care for you, then of course your plan will fail.” 

“So what?” Jason says. “At least then I’ll know!”

“Yet the Joker will live,” Damian retorts. “I fail to see why this is the better plan. It is very foolish. You should allow me to kill the Joker instead. Then we can fix your problems with Father in a more realistic way.”

“I’m not forcing a six-year-old to kill someone!”

“Yet you would force Father to do so?”

“Sit down, Jason,” Talia says. Her voice is firm.

Jason realizes he’s standing, looming over Damian, fists clenched like he’s halfway to taking a swing. His knees weaken. He collapses back onto the pillows. He curls up and hides his face in his knees as he hugs himself. 

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry.”

“I must ask, habibi -- what will you do after my beloved kills the Joker?” Talia’s voice has gentled.

Jason shrugs. “I don’t know. Go home. Go back to school. I don’t know.”

“You will make no other demands of him, then?”

Glancing up from his knees for a moment to look at her, Jason asks, “Like what?”

“After he has killed the Joker,” Talia says. “The next time you feel unsafe, or you doubt your father’s love for you. Who will you ask him to kill next?”

“What?”

“Penguin, perhaps? Or Two-Face? Perhaps Harley Quinn, the Joker’s oft-accomplice? Who will be the next to die?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I wouldn’t -- I don’t want him to kill anyone else!” The dinner Jason barely ate roils painfully in his stomach. He wouldn’t. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want any of that.

Talia’s voice goes hard. He’s never heard her speak this way before. “If you succeed in forcing my beloved to kill once, you will be able to make him do anything. Will you suborn him with an ever-growing list of demands and hold his love hostage until he fulfills every one?”

Jason realizes he’s crying. “I’m not-- that’s not--”

“Isn’t it?” Talia asks.

Jason flees.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry for the delay, I was having top surgery (woot!)

Talia finds him just after dark, when the sun has set and the sky behind it has turned purple but the stony cliff face at Jason’s back is still warm with heat. Talia finds him, and she sits beside him without saying a word, and he doesn’t want to be comforted by her presence — she stole him, she kept him from B, and now she won’t even let him get revenge for his own murder — but he _is_ comforted, nonetheless.

“I feel like every time we have a conversation, I run away in the middle of it,” Jason says, finally. 

“You are entitled to your space,” Talia says, “as well as your feelings. We do not mind that you express them in this way.”

Jason frowns. He stares up at the sky, slowly filling with stars. He looks back down at the sand in front of his feet. He takes a deep breath. “You’ll get tired of it soon, though. You’ll start to miss the old me. The quiet one. He was a lot better at being obedient, I bet.”

Talia laughs. 

It startles Jason, the sound of it ringing across the boulders and the sand. His shoulders hunch up around his ears. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Oh, habibi. You do not remember,” Talia says. She covers her mouth with her hand, but she’s still smiling, and her eyes shine in the starlight. “Since the day you came to me, you were never obedient. If you wished to sleep, you slept. If you wished to walk, you walked. If you did not wish to move, you would not, and could not, be moved.”

She reaches out, then. Slowly. Cards her fingers through the hair over his ears once, twice. “There is no old Jason and new Jason. No two separate Jasons. Just one boy, who can speak now when before he could not. One boy, who is healed now when before he was hurt. I did not tire of him before, and I will not tire of him now.”

“But,” Jason protests, voice tight in his throat, tears threatening _again_ , confusion and fear and pain and loss and _hope_ all battling within him. “Why? Why did you— is it just to, to manipulate B? To have something to hold over him, something to, to lure him in with? Because it’s not going to work, it’s been—”

He chokes. Scrubs at his face with his fist. Stares down at his knees. “It’s been a long time since B cared enough about me for that to work.”

Talia sighs and leans back against the stone. “Care. Yes. In English, the word ‘care’ has two different meanings, yes?”

“I guess,” Jason mumbles. “What’s your point?”

“Tell me what it means to care for someone.”

“Seriously?” Jason asks. At Talia’s nod, he sighs. “I guess… when you care for someone, you like them. They matter to you. You want them to be happy, and safe.”

Talia nods again. “That is correct. What else may it mean to care for someone?”

“You mean, like, take care _of_ someone?” Jason asks. “It’s when you help someone do things when they can’t, because they’re sick, or too young. Like, feed them and change their diapers. Right?”

“I have always thought it appropriate that, in English, these two meanings are held within the same word. When you care for someone, it follows that you may begin to care for them.” Talia’s voice starts out strong, then quiets. “A boy was brought to me. He was hurt, frightened, and hungry for more than just food. There was a person inside him, and I found myself wanting to feed him, and comfort him, and learn who he was. Protect him, if I could. And I found that the longer he was with me, the less I thought of him as a hungry, frightened boy, and the more I thought of him as the brother to my son.

“Years ago, when my Beloved took you home, he also saw a hurt, hungry, frightened boy. He fed you. He cared for you. And he began to care about you, just as I have done so, by seeing the boy you are inside. You may run away from me ten thousand times, and I will still come to find you. You may hate your father every day of your life for his failings, but he will always love you.”

Jason takes the cloth Talia hands him and buries his face in it for a moment, shoulders shaking. He pulls it away to wipe his eyes, and when he looks up, Damian is standing in front of him, frowning, arms crossed. Jason lets out a shaky breath, hands the cloth back to Talia, and opens his arms wide.

Dimples appear on Damian’s cheeks. Then he sits down on Jason’s lap, facing outward, and tilts his head back to look at the starts as Jason wraps his arms around him.

“I’m sorry for yelling, ahki,” Jason whispers into Damian’s soft hair.

“I shall forgive you,” Damian says. “Are you finished running away?”

“Yes,” Jason says. He glances over at Talia, sees the warm look in her eyes as she watches them. “Yes, I think I am.”

*

Talia makes the phone call in their tent, away from the cliff face to lessen the disruption to the cell signal. Jason and Damian listen to her side of the call, cuddled up together on the pillows while Talia stands and paces.

“Hello, Beloved,” she says.

“The sky was a beautiful shade of azure today. It reminded me of that apartment we spent the summer in, do you remember? The blue walls, and the balcony overlooking the square?” she says.

“It make me think of you, and the photo of me that you keep hidden away in a drawer,” she says.

“It will rain tomorrow, but after that perhaps, if I am lucky, the sky shall return to that blue again,” she says. 

“Yes, Beloved,” she says.

“Goodbye, Beloved,” she says.

She turns off the phone, removes the battery, and pulls out the SIM card, snapping it between her fingers.

“It is done,” she says.

*

Talia leaves with Ibn Jamal to discuss the logistics of how they’re getting to wherever it is they’re supposed to go.

Another guard comes in with water for them to clean their faces and hands. Damian calls her Umm’Haled.

Jason frowns, confused. He could have sworn he heard Talia call her Fatimah yesterday. “Can I ask you a question about names?”

“Yes,” Umm’Haled says. “What is your question?”

Jason bites his lip, worried he’s about to be _extremely_ rude. “Sometimes people call Talia ‘Umm’Damian’. So does that mean you’re Haled’s mom?”

Umm’Haled nods. Her face is somber. “Yes. Haled was my son. He died. Many years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason says. “Why do you— never mind.”

Her eyes are warm as she looks at him. He wonders how long he’s known her. “Why what?”

“Why do people still call you Umm’Haled?”

She smiles at him sadly.

“He was my son. People die. Love does not.”

*

Jason and Damian wait in the bedroom of a simple apartment on the outskirts of Mecca. The walls are a gentle sky blue, with white curtains across the windows and across each interior doorway.

Damian is content to sit on the bed, back leaning against the wall, the picture of idle, uncaring serenity. Jason could almost believe it, except for the way Damian reaches a hand up every few minutes to bite nervously at a fingernail.

Jason waits by the doorway, peers through a gap in the curtain looking into the front room, where Talia sits at a table set for tea. They wait, and they wait, and they wait — and then, they’re no longer waiting, because there’s a polite knock on the front door. Talia stands, and she answers it.

Jason knew it was going to be Bruce. He knew Bruce would find them, knew Bruce would correctly interpret Talia’s message, knew Bruce would show up right on time and knock on the door but there — there, for the first time in years — he is.

“Hello, Talia,” Bruce says, and the sound of his voice makes Jason’s heart thump in his chest, like it had run into a brick wall and bounced off.

Bruce stoops to kiss Talia’s cheek as he steps inside. He’s dressed like a local, in a long white cotton tunic and black pants, a checkered keffiyeh over his head.

He looks old. There are lines on his face, around his eyes, that Jason can see from his hiding spot clear across the room. He looks old, and he looks tired, and Jason wants to look away but for some reason he’s rooted to the spot, frozen, watching.

He watches Talia lead Bruce to the table. He watches Bruce pull the chair out for Talia to sit, then pushes it back in like a gentleman. He watches them pour the tea into small, clear glass cups and sip it slowly, talking of the sky, the apartment, the things inside that have changed or remained the same.

They chat quietly through a second cup of tea. Then a third.

Then Bruce sets down his empty cup, and he leans forward, and in a soft voice he says, “Talia. Where are my children?”

Talia tilts her chin toward the bedroom doorway, and Jason finds that his feet are pulling him backward, away from the door, away from his father’s approaching shadow and back onto the bed, arms locking around Damian protectively because —

— because Jason ran away and Jason _died_ and Jason is so angry and Jason is so afraid and what if Bruce is angry at _him_ —

— because Damian is here and Damian is Bruce’s but Bruce never knew about him but —

— but Bruce said _children_ —

— _children_ —

And then it’s too late for fear and it’s too late for running and it’s too late for second guessing, because the curtain is pulled aside. Bruce steps into the doorway, his shoulders filling the space and his head just an inch or two shy of brushing the lintel. He stands there, tall and strong.

Then he sags like he’s been shot or stabbed and is rapidly losing blood, his left shoulder hitting the doorpost and just barely holding him up.

But there’s no blood. No wound. And the look on B’s face isn’t a grimace of pain — it’s a bright, teary smile.

“Hello, boys,” he says gently. “May I come in?”

It’s Damian who nods.

Bruce steps forward, a careful approach. When he reaches the bed, he doesn’t sit beside them, crowding them in. He kneels in front of them, still smiling, and rests his hands on his bent knee.

Jason finally, finally manages to find his voice. Maybe. 

“This is Damian,” he says in a rush. “He’s six years old—”

— small fingers pinch him in the side, and Jason amends himself —

“—He’s six and a half. He’s got your nose, and he thinks he’s never wrong.”

Bruce’s eyes crinkle more into the smile as he looks at his son. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Damian. My name is Bruce. I’m your baba.”

“Do you wish for me to call you Bruce, or Baba?” Damian asks. 

“Whatever makes you more comfortable,” Bruce says gently.

Damian thinks for a moment, then nods decisively. “I shall have to experiment, then. Would you like for me to hug you?”

Bruce looks startled for a moment, which Jason can empathize with, having known Damian for longer than five minutes. “Again, it’s whatever you’re comfortable with.”

That’s all Damian needs to lift his arms expectantly, not even bothering to get up off the bed first. 

Bruce straightens, reaches down and gently wraps his arms around Damian and stands back up with his young son wrapped around him like an octopus. His eyes are squeezed shut, tears leaking out of the corners and making Jason’s own chest ache in empathy. Bruce’s breath hitches.

“Are you all right?” Damian asks.

“I’m fine,” Bruce says, managing to make his voice sound almost normal.

“Umi says you are bad at emotions,” Damian says baldly, making Bruce snort. “That is all right. I will teach you.”

“I’m sure you will.”

They stand there for a long while, and Jason thinks maybe he should just sneak off while they’re wrapped up in each other. Give them some time without him just sitting there staring. Then Damian kicks his legs, and Bruce sets him down, and Damian tugs on his hand and says, “Now Jason.”

Jason stands up from the bed and slowly gets to his feet. He wishes he were wearing shoes. He turns to face Bruce.

Bruce looks like his heart is breaking in his chest. Like he’s been shot _and_ stabbed _and_ fear-gassed, and like Jason is an antidote and a suture kit and a bag of O-negative blood all at the same time.

“Jay,” Bruce says, voice barely holding off from breaking. “Would you like for me to hug you?”

 _“Please,”_ Jason whispers.

Bruce does.

*


End file.
